(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image formation apparatus. In particular, the present invention relates to a technique to control printing by an image formation apparatus such as a printer that acquires image data from an external server and prints the acquired image data. This control is performed in the case where the image formation apparatus can not acquire the image data.
(2) Description of the Related Art
In recent years, image formation apparatuses such as copy machines capable of performing so called “direct printing” have been becoming common (see Japanese Laid-open Patent Application Publication No. 11-134125). The “Direct printing” is to directly analyze a document written in a markup language such as HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), XHTML (Extensible Hyper Text Markup Language) and XML (Extensible Markup Language) received from a communication terminal such as a mobile telephone apparatus, acquire image data from an external server specified by URLs included in the document, and lay out and print the image data according to layout information of the document.
In order to perform such direct printing of the document written in a markup language, the image formation apparatuses are equipped with browser software. The image formation apparatuses execute browser software to analyze the document written in the markup language. Detecting a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) that shows a location of image data stored in an external server on a network, the image formation apparatuses acquire the image data from the server specified by the URL, and lay out and print the acquired image data according to layout information described in the document.
Thus, the communication terminal can easily get the image formation apparatuses to print out a document written in a markup language by simply transmitting such a document to the image formation apparatuses.
Such an image formation apparatus has to acquire the image data from an external server to perform the direct printing of a document written in a markup language. In some cases, however, the image formation apparatus can not acquire the image data from the server due to a bad connection with the server.
In such cases, if the image formation apparatus suspends the printing until receipt of the user's instruction, the image formation apparatus has to store the data for the printing all the while, and part of the memory area is occupied with the data. This disturbs efficient usage of the memory. Thus, conventional technologies cancel the printing without exception, or continue the printing without exception based on image data other than the data that the image formation apparatus can not acquire.
However, if the image formation apparatus cancels printing without exception when it can not acquire image data, the image formation apparatus might unnecessarily cancel the printing. This applies to, for example, the case where the image data that the image formation apparatus can not acquire is image data of advertisements which is unnecessary for the user. If this is the case, the image formation apparatus is required to restart the printing, and it takes an extra time to complete the printing.
On the other hand, in the case where the image formation apparatus continues the printing without exception based on image data other than the data that the image formation apparatus can not acquire, even if the information shown by the image data that the image formation apparatus can not acquire is important for the user, the image formation apparatus completes the printing without providing such important information on the sheet. This results in the waste of the sheet.